AWP Preconference Training Workshop on Bridging Diversities

Dear Colleagues,

If you are attending AWP 2011, I hope you will consider participating in this preference training workshop, which I am co-facilitating. It offers valuable tools that are particularly relevant to the work of this group.

Bridging Diversities to Create Sustainable Leadership for Social Change:
The Be Present Empowerment Model®

What does it take to foster open dialogue and create enduring partnerships among diverse groups when we live in the social, political, and economic systems that we seek to change?

In order to create peace and justice for all people, we all are responsible for examining our individual and collective roles in perpetuating the “isms” (racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, etc.). Grounded in this understanding, we realize the depth of how these issues have an impact on ourselves, our families and communities; and begin to model new ways that foster tolerance, promote peace, and partner for justice.

Be Present, Inc. supports individuals to be present in their lives – to be more effective leaders in creating health and well being within themselves as well as in their families, schools, organizations, workplaces and communities. We teach a model for developing sustainable leadership for social justice at the individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels.

This workshop teaches the Be Present Empowerment Model®, a leadership curriculum that develops self-awareness, understanding, voice, and purpose in building sustainable relationships in our diverse and changing world. Participants will:

• Explore in a safe space the ways in which our thoughts, feelings, and actions have been shaped by our own and others’ beliefs about our race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity issues.
• See the nature of our shifting and fluid location in intersecting hierarchies of dominance and subordination, privilege and exclusion.
• Foster open dialogue, broadened understanding, and shared learning.
• Develop enduring partnerships for change.

The workshop is open to all people. Our approach is experiential and highly interactive. We create and maintain an open, supportive learning community in which participants are encouraged to share their own experiences. Methods include personal interaction through large and small group dialogues.

warmest regards,
Clare Holzman